Free Republic

Gary Webb, reporter who exposed CIA, dies THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Gary Webb, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who wrote a controversial series of stories linking the CIA to crack cocaine trafficking in Los Angeles, has died at age 49. Webb was found Friday morning at his home in Sacramento County, dead of an apparent suicide. Moving-company workers called authorities after discovering a note posted on his front door that read, "Please do not enter. Call 911 and ask for an ambulance." Webb died of a gunshot wound to the head, according to the Sacramento County coroner's office....

In an interview last year, Mr. Freeman argued that the austere cuts enacted at his newspapers reflected a more realistic understanding of the industry’s direction and better positioned Alden-owned publishers for the pandemic’s downswing. “We were prepared for a real step down in terms of a recession because we were honest about what was needed in the future,” he said. “Numbers don’t lie.” The newspaper industry’s numbers looked bleak even before the pandemic. Annual advertising revenue dropped 70%, or $34 billion, between 2005 and 2018, according to estimates by the Pew Research Center. More than 1,800 newspapers closed between 2004...

Moments after the story hit the wires that Gary Webb had been found dead of an apparent suicide, the radical left began hinting that the former San Jose Mercury News reporter who broke the Nicaraguan Contra-Crack Connection story had met with a more sinister fate. Alex Walker, of the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center, got the conspiracy ball rolling with the help of single quotation marks and a bit of idyllic prose: They are calling it a 'suicide.' What an amazing 'coincidence' that this happens just when Our Dear Great Dumb 'Intelligence Community' is under scrutiny again. Also...

His name was never spoken in two hours of speeches, but Donald Trump's anti-Islamic rhetoric and the Islamophobia it has churned up were roundly repudiated Sunday, as Bay Area civic and religious leaders told Muslim residents and neighbors: You are one of us and you are not alone.

SAN JOSE (CBS 5 / AP) ― The holding company for newspaper publisher MediaNews Group filed for Chapter 11 protection Friday and expects to emerge from bankruptcy in a month or two. Affiliated Media Inc., the privately held parent company for the owner of 54 daily newspapers including the San Jose Mercury News, Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times and Marin Independent Journal, had said Jan. 15 it would be making the move. The company said it had a deal with creditors that will cut its debt to $165 million from $930 million. Lenders led by Bank of America would get...

As reaction to the vote on Proposition 8 continues, reasonable people have a right to ask whether some of the tactics of same-sex marriage supporters will provoke another backlash. People are free to protest, but at best, or worst depending on how you see this volatile issue, gay-rights supporters who are engaging in some questionable tactics risk alienating people in the middle who may have been considering changing their positions. The positions of both sides are more than clear. Gay-rights advocates not only want California courts to toss out the Yes on 8 vote from the Nov. 4 election, but...

After an intense campaign that cost more than $75 million, California's voters have approved a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, dealing a huge blow to the gay rights movement and setting the stage for another round of court battles over the volatile issue. While the Yes on 8 campaign claimed victory just before midnight, the numbers continued to play out in their favor this morning. Still, advocates of same-sex marriage had clung to hopes that a surge of support from uncounted votes could still overcome the ban. But this morning, with 95 percent of precincts reporting, the measure passed with...

The American newspaper industry is in transition, adjusting to a world in which new technologies allow news and information to flow in many forms. At the Mercury News, that transition is leading us to make some immediate changes to the newspaper, detailed to the right, even as we tackle the larger challenge head-on. We've launched a major rethinking project to determine the role we'll play in our community as a trusted news and information source, in print and online. We're doing this with the help of a model program called Newspaper Next, a brainchild of the American Press Institute and...

While police continued to investigate the unexpected death of longtime Mercury News journalist Rich Ramirez, there were indications Thursday that the 44-year-old newsman may have taken his own life. Ramirez, a veteran reporter and editor who served for the last 12 years as assistant to the executive editor, was discovered Wednesday morning in his Livermore back yard, with a fatal injury the Alameda County Coroner's Office described as a knife wound in his midsection. A coroner's spokesman said the death was considered a "possible suicide," adding that self-inflicted knife wounds are uncommon but not unheard-of as a cause of death....

NEW YORK A report in today's San Jose Mercury-News confirms a Wall Street Journal story published Tuesday which revealed that Knight Ridder is telling prospective buyers that its profits can be sharply increased by cutting jobs and benefits and reducing the size of some of its 32 newspapers. Pete Carey, reporting for the Knight Ridder-owned Mercury-News, writes, "All interested parties have signed confidentiality agreements. But leaks of the company's projections already have begun. "The figures Knight Ridder is giving potential buyers are similar to those in a Morgan Stanley research report published in November. The report, by analyst Douglas Arthur,...

16% reduction ends week of newspaper industry buyouts and layoffs; Cuts are 'painful,' says editor, but the paper will survive The San Jose Mercury News said Friday that it would reduce its staff by 60, including 52 in the newsroom, first with buyouts but with layoffs if necessary. The announcement capped a week of steep newsroom reductions at major metropolitan daily newspapers across the country, including 500 jobs from the New York Times Company and 100 jobs from the two Knight Ridder newspapers in Philadelphia. The prior week, the San Francisco Chronicle accepted 90 resignations through a disputed buyout program,...

From AJR, February/March 2005 issue April/May Preview: Does No Mean No? A former journalist says she doesn’t want to be interviewed, but then talks freely. Should the interviewer have used her remarks? By Natalie Pompilio Natalie Pompilio is a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. One of a reporter's basic tasks is to keep a source talking, to get past the initial refusals and hesitations and score an interview. But what if the source is a former journalist who believes her conversation with a columnist is just a friendly talk between colleagues, not an on-the-record interview? T.T. Nhu, a one-time San...

You know something's wrong when a newspaper switches publishers, as the Mercury News did this year--twice in 11 months. The paper lost 3.2 percent of its daily circulation in the six months ending in September. Lest our venerable daily begin the journey that will lead into its sunset, Merc managers are preparing to take bold action to "staunch the circulation and readership decline of the Mercury News," according to memorandum prepared by Executive Editor SUSAN GOLDBERG that was helpfully leaked to Fly. And in the interest of preparing the reading public for the shocking changes that may lie ahead, we...

After any suicide, survivors feel guilty. Was there a way it could have been avoided? Was there something we could have said or done to change such a terrible end? Most of the time, the rational answer is no. People kill themselves because of depression that we can't fully understand, let alone heal. Yet we're still haunted, particularly if the person committing suicide distinguished himself doing what we do. Even more so if there's history. That was the case with Gary Webb, the ex-investigative reporter for the Mercury News.

As Governor Gray Davis begins his 2nd term, he faces a host of problems. One in particular that is likely to be among his greatest challenges - yet to date has received limited attention -- is reform of the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS). CalPERS is the nation's largest pension fund. In keeping with what Smart Money described as "the nation's most formidable force in shareholder activism," it has a reputation of being an international corporate governance watchdog, using its weighty economic clout to impose its will on large and small companies alike. Yet due to the Davis...